Wednesday, December 7, 2011

100 Great Anti-War Quotes

Many of them come from America's venerated Founding Fathers like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.

Many also, come from conservative voices like Pat Buchanan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand, and even George W. Bush (before he became president and went back on his campaign promises to keep America out of open-ended wars and nation-building).

So if your friends or co-workers question your patriotism for opposing war, refer them to this list so they can see how their Founding Fathers felt about war.

1. "As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral." -U.S. WWII General Omar Bradley

2. "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." -James Madison

3. "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -James Madison

4. "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. " -James Madison

5. "Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." -James Madison

6. "The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war." -James Madison

7. "It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." -James Madison

8. "Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness." -Thomas Jefferson

9. "The most successful war seldom pays for its losses." -Thomas Jefferson

10. "The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force." -Thomas Jefferson

11. "Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other." -Thomas Jefferson

12. "I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind." -Thomas Jefferson

13. "Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it." -Thomas Jefferson

14. "If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." -Thomas Jefferson

15. "Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government." -Thomas Jefferson

17. "A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit." -Thomas Jefferson

18. "Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." -Thomas Jefferson

19. "War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer." -Thomas Jefferson

20. "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." -Thomas Jefferson

21. "Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." -George Washington

22. "The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." -George Washington

23. "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." -George Washington

24. "It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." -George Washington

25. "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -George Washington

54. "When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

55. "This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

56. "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

57. "Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing." -Ayn Rand

58. "Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives." -Ayn Rand

59. "No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country." -Alexis de Tocqueville

60. "All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it." -Alexis de Tocqueville

61. "If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road." -George W. Bush, before becoming president and doing exactly what he promised not to.

63. "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it." -George Orwell

64. "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." -George Orwell

65. "The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor." -George Orwell

66. "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable." -George Orwell

67. "War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent." -George Orwell

68. "All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." -George Orwell

69. "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." -George Orwell

70. "What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood." -Aldous Huxley

71. "A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

72. "The next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

73. "In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful." -Leo Tolstoy

74. "A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over...is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen." -G.K. Chesterton

75. "War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it." -Martin Luther

76. "How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business." -Albert Einstein

77. "It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -Albert Einstein

78. "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." -The Mahatma Gandhi

79. "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" -The Mahatma Gandhi

80. "Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary." -The Mahatma Gandhi

81. "Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood." -The Mahatma Gandhi

82. "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." -The Mahatma Gandhi

83. "If we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire." -Pat Buchanan

84. "All forms of violence, especially war, are totally unacceptable as means to settle disputes between and among nations, groups and persons." -The Dalai Lama

85. "The best defense is no offense." -Dr. Ivan Eland

86. "It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

87. "The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

96. "History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents…. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets." -Ludwig von Mises

97. "War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings." -Ludwig von Mises

98. "War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror." -Ludwig von Mises

99. "Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things." -Ludwig von Mises

100. "Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly." -Ludwig von Mises

A special thanks to AntiWar.com for supplying the vast bulk of material for this list of anti-war quotes. To read more anti-war quotes (and some pro-war ones that will chill you to the bone), visit their much larger list here.

You bring up a great point. For some people, antiwar sentiment springs from an ethical system of strict pacifism- in which case any war and even violent self-defense are unjustified. As for me, I am a strict-non-aggressionist, and my quarrel isn't with war or with violence per se, but with the sad reality that most wars and most violent acts (the overwhelming majority, I'd say) are aggressive.

Yes I'd agree with that totally, Grant! And the beauty of a free society, is that it fosters just that- mutual cooperation. The ideology of freedom should have been called "socialism" instead of that anti-social ideology that seeks to wage a constant and total war on its victims' lives, liberty, and property.

Life is lived in the present.Yesterday is gone.Tomorrow is yet to be.Today is the miracle.Let's initiate our lives towards peace. Let’s teach the humans that our first religion has to be Humanity. Above all let’s make them believe “ THE WORLD IS REAL”

Because I do know what it's about. Observe history, especially recent American history, and it's not hard to see that war is about lining the pockets of special interest contractors that profit from it, and just generally deriving the cheap satisfaction of a bully.

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad. Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1798-05-13); published in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1865), Vol. II, p. 141

Try all these sniveling quotes when you're about to have your throat opened up by some radical nut case. I could care less about someone lining their pockets from war. I want to be able to speak, worship God, love my family, and go where I want to go. Yep, all your passive comments make a whole lot of sense.........not! Then, some wacko misquotes Jesus! Imagine that!